the mains supply, with a pump to keep it circulating, but there are all sorts of holes in it now so it kept draining away again. Whenever I felt you fishing for Abbie, I turned the pumps on and put up a wall of running water between you and her. And one time I gave you a bit of salt on your tail, too, just by the way.?
?I remember,? I said, a touch grimly.
Peace managed a weak laugh. ? ?Set a thief to catch a thief,? yeah? Only it doesn?t work unless you get hold of a better thief than the one you?re looking for.?
?And yet,? I reminded him, ?here I am.?
?Only because someone ratted me out. You didn?t find me by looking.?
I let that pass. If Peace wanted to have a pissing contest, he could play both sides. In any case, I thought I?d heard a car door slam somewhere out on the road?far enough away that it was on the limit of hearing. Peace didn?t seem to have noticed it, though, so maybe I was mistaken.
?I?m going to wake Abbie up,? he said. ?Unless there?s anything else you want to ask me about??
?No,? I said. ?I?m good. My bedtime story needs are met.?
I turned my back on him, walked to the door, and looked out. Nothing moved in the baleful moonlight. Behind me, there were only the small sounds of Peace dealing out a hand of cards on the bare concrete floor. When I glanced his way again Abbie was back, standing at his side as if she?d never left. I had to admit, grudgingly, that he was as good as he thought he was. They were talking in low murmurs, and I felt a definite reluctance to disturb their privacy.
I stepped out into the dark instead. If I smoked, I?d have lit a cigarette. If I?d had any booze left, I?d have had a drink. As it was there was nothing I could do but wait. I must have been wrong about the car door, because nothing was stirring.
Dr. Feelgood ought to be here by now. Edgy and irritable, I fished out the phone again to call Pen and ask her to hurry him along. This time I noticed what I hadn?t before: there were four missed call alerts, all from the same number: Nicky Heath?s.
The first and second times, he hadn?t left a message. The third time he had. I played it back.
?There?s something wrong here, Castor.? Nicky?s voice, stiff with tension; a prolonged scraping sound in the background as he moved something heavy across the floor. ?There?s a whole bunch of people outside. They turned up in four cars, and now they?re standing around like they?re waiting for someone. I do not fucking like this. If it?s anything to do with the shit you?re involved with, why don?t you come over here and deal with it your fucking self, okay? Call me. Fucking call me, okay? Like, now.?
My throat suddenly dry, I flicked to the last message.
?This is a siege here, Castor!? Nicky?s voice was a yell now, which meant he would have had to work hard to inflate his nonfunctional lungs. ?They shot the cameras out. The fucking cameras! I?m blind, you understand me? They could be right outside my door, and I wouldn?t?oh shit!?
There was an abrupt
I turned in that direction. A figure came into view a second later, stepping out of the shadows and through the narrow opening between the raised earth beds onto the driveway.
?Over here, Dr. Forster,? I called, and the figure turned, came forward into the light.
When I got a look at his face, I experienced a momentary lurch of dissociation: then my heart jumped in my chest like a test pilot in crash webbing. I?d never met Dylan Forster, but I knew that face well enough. When I?d first met the guy, only three days before in my office, he?d introduced himself as Stephen Torrington. And now, in a sudden flash of elementary logic, it occurred to me that both of those names were as good as each other because his real name had to be something different again. I also knew now why he?d had to send someone else to look after me when I collapsed at Pen?s house; at that point, he couldn?t afford for me to see his face.
I thought of Peace?s Glock, which was still inside lying on the floor of the Oriflamme. But it wouldn?t have mattered even if I could have got to it. The bastard had set this up exactly the way he wanted. He already had a gun in his hand and it was pointing at my chest.
?You want to watch that thing, or it could go off,? I said, because I had to say something, had to get some kind of interaction going that might buy me some time while I thought of a way to distract, disarm, and decapitate him.
He shook his head. ?It won?t be going off just yet,? he said, in an almost languid tone. Funny that Pen had never mentioned his soft, half-elided mid-Atlantic accent. The smirk playing across his lips confirmed what I already knew.
?You?re Anton Fanke.?
He made a mock bow, saluting my way-past-the-eleventh-hour leap of intuitive logic. ?If you?d figured that out three days ago,? he said, his tone the gentlest of sneers, ?I might have been impressed. Check him for weapons.?
The last words weren?t addressed to me, but past me into the shadows at the side of the building. Three men who must have been standing absolutely still until then stepped out of the darkness, surrounded me, and frisked me with extreme thoroughness. They didn?t look like my mental image of satanists: they looked a lot more like my mental image of FBI agents. One of them was carrying a snub-nosed handgun, which he pressed to the base of my neck.
The other two, searching my left- and right-hand sides in rough synchrony, came up with my dagger and whistle respectively. They held them up for Fanke?s inspection.
?Now we?ll go inside,? Fanke said.
I took a step toward him, but the men on either side of me moved in to block me and the gun at my neck pressed a little harder. I knew I?d never get there.
?Why Pen?? I demanded, between my teeth. ?What did you need her for??
?Rafael Ditko was the vessel,? said Fanke, throwing out his arm toward the door of the Oriflamme in formal invitation. ?I had to get close to him. We had our plan already in place, but if it failed?it might have been necessary to take Ditko from the Stanger clinic and kill him to release Asmodeus?s spirit from him. Pamela would have been very useful in that eventuality. As things have turned out though, I think we?ll be just fine as we are. Wilkes, you can lead the way. You?re just marginally more expendable than Mr. Castor is at this point.?
Things were coming apart fast. In desperation, I tensed to jump for Fanke as he walked toward me. He favored me with a glance of amused contempt.
?That would be a mistake,? he said in a clipped tone. ?I?d like you alive at this point, because you?re looking like a pretty good scapegoat, but don?t push me.?
Caught in his sights and those of the guy behind me, I briefly considered tackling him low and seeing if they both let fly and took each other out. But that wouldn?t even work in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Fanke was watching me closely, and he saw the moment when I stood down from the fight-or-flight precipice. ?Inside,? he said again. The man behind me tapped the base of my neck with his gun barrel, and I obediently followed the man he?d called Wilkes back into the Oriflamme. I?d half-hoped that Peace might have caught something of the commotion outside and scraped together some kind of an ambush. No such luck. His head snapped around as he registered the multiple sets of footsteps. As Wilkes stepped to one side of me and the goon with the gun stepped to the other to get a clear line of sight, Peace?s gaze darted to one, then the other, then back to me. By some reflex he couldn?t control, his hand shot up to grasp hold of Abbie?s?and went right through her insubstantial form. Abbie didn?t even notice. She was staring in wordless, silent terror at the strange faces. Or maybe not so strange to her: she might be recognizing them from five nights before. She might remember Fanke as the man who?d put a knife into her heart.
?You bastard, Castor,? Peace said, his voice a dead whisper. His second thoughts were better. He reached down and scattered the deck of cards across the floor. Abbie flickered and then disappeared, her mouth open to call out to him.
?Don?t make this worse than it has to be,? I said, and before anyone could stop me I stepped forward.
My eyes hadn?t had any more time to readjust to the deeper darkness inside the Oriflamme than theirs had, but I knew roughly where Peace?s Glock was. I didn?t even have to break step: just flick my foot out a little to the left as if I were intercepting a pass inside the penalty box, and touch the toe of my shoe to the trigger guard.
I flicked the gun end-over-end through the air, and my aim was good: wasted afternoons in the old gym at Alsop?s Comprehensive School for Boys, kicking and heading a ball endlessly against the wall, brought belated and unexpected dividends.
Peace reached up, took the Glock out of the air and fired without seeming to aim. The thunder roared directly in my ear, and a body slammed against a wall just to my right. As it slid to the floor the thunder sounded again, deafening in this shell of a room with no soft surfaces to catch and filter the sound. On my left, Fanke jerked as if stung, then brought his own gun up to return fire. I knocked it out of his hands with a scything, two-fisted swipe.
Then just as things seemed to be going great, something hard and heavy and sickeningly solid slammed into the side of my head
